I don't want to write this post. It's just too much, and I'm pooped. It has been a full ten days since I last sat down to write a post here, and it feels like at least a month has passed—maybe two. It's Wednesday, and we were supposed to be here on Saturday afternoon. As I write this, we are in South Carolina, right beside the point where the ICW and the Waccamaw River diverge. Why were we not here five days ago? There's a story, and I will tell all as soon as I catch you up on everything that happened after we left Washington, NC. We left Washington in the morning after our last entry here and ran back down the Pamlico River and turned onto Goose Creek and the canal to its south, ultimately stopping at R.E. Mayo's Seafood Dock where we spent the night. While there I changed the oil in our main engines, and we enjoyed a quiet night. Mayo's even had a "used oil" tank where I was able to dispose of the evidence. Early last Tuesday morning we topped off our fuel tanks while we were near Mayo's fuel dock and then continued south to the Neuse River where we bounced around on some uncomfortable seas until the Adams Creek turnoff. We continued to Bogue Sound and ran all the way to Swansboro to a wonderful anchorage just off the beaten path known as "Spoil Island." Last Wednesday we rose with the sun and were underway soon thereafter to make a long run down the ICW to Carolina Beach State Park, a favorite stop of ours, where we spent two nights. We had mail and Amazon packages stacking up ahead of us in Southport, NC and didn't want to get there before they did! Friday morning, October 21, 2022, we ran the 12 or so miles from Carolina Beach to Southport to visit with our friends, Ian and Jen—fellow mis-placed Mainers. They were the ones who were collecting our packages on their front stoop. Ian is now the dockmaster at South Harbour Village Marina in Southport and he caught a glimpse of us heading toward the nearby anchorage. He immediately called us on the radio and offered us a spot in the marina for the night, which we were very happy to accept. Ian and Jen took us out to dinner at the Rusty Hook, right beside the marina. We had a great time hanging with them, and as we said goodnight, we knew it would be for a while. Saturday morning, we were again up with the sun and shortly underway. We put about 20 miles under the keel, and then at a particular point as we were nearing the South Carolina border, we slowed down for a no-wake zone. As we exited the zone, I began to throttle the engines back up and SOMETHING was wrong. The engines did not sound right at all. I gave the helm to Stacey and ran below to check on the engines and noted that there was coolant on the floor by the starboard engine, and I ran aft and noted that the engine was belching out white smoke. That was all I needed to decide that we may have lost a head gasket in that engine, so I shut it down. Not. Good. We began looking at local repair options and trying to decide if we should go forward on one engine or turn around and go back on one engine. Ultimately, after considering our options and calling a couple of local friends to figure out how we'd find needed support to figure this all out, we decided that heading back to Ian's marina in Southport made the most sense, so we came about and ran slowly on one engine back from whence we came, arriving around 1:00pm. As soon as we were back in Southport, I began making calls to try to figure out next steps, but being a Saturday afternoon, most (read: all) of my calls that day achieved nothing. Sunday was similar. Monday came around, and I made a flurry of phone calls to marine mechanics and parts shops. For half of the day, all I did was talk to voice mail systems and answering machines. The first call that actually "landed" was to a parts supplier in Washington State who was able to ship me a head gasket. I placed the order and then, in a fit of frustration from not being able to speak with a mechanic, called Earl Summerville, known as the "Hino Whisperer." Our engines were made by Hino, which is a subsidiary of Toyota. I described everything to Earl and he stopped me and said, "That doesn't sound like a head gasket to me. I think it's a bad injector. Pull your fuel injectors and get them pop-tested." I immediately called the west-coast vendor back and asked them to "pause" the order until I knew more. They agreed. Then I climbed into the engine room and started removing fuel injectors—the very same fuel injectors we just had rebuilt in northern Maryland. The first one I pulled out seemed visually okay. The second one was coated in a weird orange slime—mind you the anti-freeze we use is made for diesel engines and it's ORANGE! It was around then that one of the extremely busy and overbooked mechanics I had called stopped by briefly to see how we were doing. I told him about my call to Earl, and he agreed that it made the most sense. I pulled the rest of the injectors and they looked just like the first. I marked the slimy one with a zip tie, and Stacey started researching how we might get up to Wilmington to the only reputable diesel machine shop she could find in the area. After some checking around, Stacey came up with the names of a couple who frequently help boaters in need in the area—Robert and Kay. They have completed the Great Loop, just as we have, and after a short conversation with Robert, they offered to loan us a car to run to the machine shop! Robert drove to the marina, we jumped in with him and visited with them at their home for an hour or two, and then we drove back to the marina in their car to be poised to make the trip to the shop first thing in the morning. Stacey had already contacted "Diesel Parts of Carolina" and they offered to check out our injectors if we could get there shortly after they opened at 8:00am. I rose at 6:40am, and by 7:30am or so, we were on the road. We arrived at the shop at 8:12am and by 8:20am we were asked to join Jeff, the expert technician, at his workbench to see what he'd discovered. The slimy injector was stuck in the "open" position, and was not popping, nor aerosolizing fuel at all. The other five checked out just perfectly. Jeff tinkered with it right in front of us, and had it testing out perfectly within minutes. We thanked him, paid for his time, took a wonderful tour of the shop, and then shuffled off to buy a few things at Trader Joe's (we had a car in a city, after all) and Sam's Club. We then ran back down to Southport where I reinstalled the injectors and started the boat. She purred.
Disaster averted, I called the company in Washington and canceled the order for the head gasket and thanked them. We then went and told Ian the good news and settled up with him for our 5 nights on his dock (we decided to stay one more night and celebrate, since it was already so late in the day, and we still had a car to return). Ian was exceptionally kind to us and made a very difficult situation so much less stressful than it otherwise might've been. We are eternally in his debt. We called Robert and Kay and drove over to return their car. They gave us the tour of their home and their nearby loop yacht, and then Robert drove us back to the marina in time for our dinner and a relaxing sleep without a broken boat hanging over our heads. Wednesday morning—this morning—we got off the dock sometime in the 8:00am hour and ran all day. We did stop in Little River (not long after sighting a manatee by Calabash Creek) at Cricket Cove Marina for fuel at the verifiably least expensive diesel stop in this area of the ICW—we paid $5.04 per gallon for about 140 gallons. This "top off" should get us most of the way to Florida. So here we are at anchor. It's pitch black out. We hear owls and crickets. This part of the ICW is completely freshwater. We are swinging at anchor by cypress trees in a little oxbow, and we are simply thrilled to be underway again. We're now on a mission to get south to our beloved Sanford, Florida, and hope to make it sooner than later. Tomorrow we will run down river through Winyah Bay past Georgetown, SC. We should be in or near Florida when next I post a blog.
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But there's not a gator in sight, and this late in the season we don't expect to see any until we reach Florida. I guess what I mean to say is, we are now in North Carolina. This place we're in now is simply lovely. I mean, truly beautiful. Nice downtown with lots of historic buildings and houses. A free dock with 48 hours of allotted time to tie up while we take it all in, and a laundry room all to ourselves to do as much laundry as we can stand for the nominal cost of $5. Washington, NC is exactly as was promised when we were reading about it and considering making a side trip up the Pamlico River to experience it for ourselves. It took a bit of doing to get here, and we'll be casting off in the morning to leave here, but it was so worth it! The last time I wrote here, one week ago, Stinkpot was tied up in Deltaville, Virginia at the Fishing Bay Yacht Club. The very next day, Monday, October 10, we had a beautiful, flat-calm day to run down the bay to stay in our regular spot on the Portsmouth, VA free dock at High Street Landing. We enjoyed being in a "downtown" location, and took a nice long walk to admire the the city's architecture and take in the ambiance of the waterfront. Tuesday morning, we set off early to avail ourselves of the inexpensive diesel price at Top Rack Marina. We had it in our plans to stop there for fuel for several days, but when we arrived in Portsmouth, someone let us know they'd just run out of fuel. We were gutted by the news, but called as soon as they opened in the morning to learn that they had just received a delivery and had not (yet) raised the price. We were there by 9am, pulled in, waited our turn, fueled, and were back underway one hour later. We spent the rest of the day running the Virginia Cut, a system of canals and rivers that connect Chesapeake Bay to Albemarle Sound, crossing into North Carolina in the process. We anchored in the North River, just south of Buck Island at the end of a very long cruising day. Wednesday, we had the anchor up with the sun and made a picture-perfect crossing of Albemarle Sound, which is Stacey's nemesis. There is no body of water that frightens her much more after having seen it angry in the spring of 2019. It was flat-calm and beautiful, and we continued on transiting the Alligator River to the Alligator-Pungo Canal, and then the Pungo River, anchoring in Slade Creek near Allison Creek to avoid the south winds overnight. Thursday, we weighed anchor early and made a dreary short hop to the free state dock in Bath, North Carolina to visit the home port of Edward Teach, A.K.A. Blackbeard. It's a cute, quiet, sleepy town up Bath Creek with 300 year-old architecture to enjoy and very little else. We did stop by Blackbeard's Tavern for a beverage and a small pizza that was completely forgettable. It was also a kind of homecoming for Stinkpot as Bath, NC was her hailing port when we bought her—because of the Blackbeard connection, we were told. We stayed in Bath a couple of nights, shoving off not altogether early in the morning for the short cruise up the Pamlico River to…drumroll…Washington, NC. Another picturesque town with a lot of old buildings, but it's more 19th and early 20th century than the 18th century buildings we enjoyed in Bath. Washington is considered a "sticky" town, meaning boaters come and stay for extended periods because it just has such a nice feel and has very affordable marina rates. I did deploy my bicycle for a ride to the local Food Lion to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables. Tomorrow we'll be shoving off to head toward Beaufort, NC and a much different vibe. For tonight, we'll enjoy one more night in this very chill little harbor. Captain's Log, Supplemental: We did a thing tonight. After the sun began to go down, I looked up at the voltage gauge and determined that we didn't get nearly enough solar charging time to make it through the night without some serious powered intervention, so we made the decision to pay for a slip and have power. We moved the boat to the only open Stinkpot-sized slip in the marina for the night.
After two false starts, the first caused by a delayed Amazon package, and the second caused by the remnants of hurricane Ian circling for what seemed like a year, perhaps a year and a half, while we watched coverage of the wasteland it left in its wake, Stinkpot has finally left the dock and begun her voyage south for the winter. With a tinge of regret, on a beautiful, sunny morning, Thursday, October 6th, we dropped lines and pointed Stinkpot away from Havre de Grace, Maryland after five weeks in the City Yacht Basin. We made some very good friends there, not the least of whom is Steve, the dockmaster at the marina, as well as the developers of the Argo Navigation app, Jeff, John, and Bill. I'm sure all of these folks will figure prominently into some future adventures, but for now we are off to new places. Our first day, we ran down to Annapolis to pump out our black water tank and grab some fuel—not a lot of fuel, but just enough since we see a very nice fuel price at Top Rack Marina. We were thinking we might anchor nearby and take in the sights and sounds of Annapolis, but that will have to wait for another time. The Annapolis Boat Show was in full swing, and our desire for a peaceful anchorage proved more powerful than the desire to see the town. It remains on our list of future stops—the boat show is as well—just not now. We continued south and anchored up the Rhode River near Sheephead Cove. No sooner did we have the anchor down and the engines off, I looked at our battery voltage and realized that the batteries were not doing well. I should back up…. While we were doing boat maintenance in Havre de Grace—mostly engine maintenance including new fuel injectors and fuel lines—I also checked the electrolyte levels in our house batteries, which are six, lead-acid, 6-volt golf-cart batteries. I was chagrined to find them near dry. I re-watered them, but the damage was done. I had never seen them require watering more often than every six months, but this time they needed it sooner, and I neglected to check them. I inspected the plates and they really looked bad. They seemed to take a charge, though, so I figured they'd be "good enough" until they weren't anymore. Well, that day turned out to be Thursday. With only our usual house loads on the batteries, and following a full day of charging from the solar and the alternator, the voltage was a very dim 12.0 volts—it should have been no less than 12.8 volts, if not more at that point with the sun still out and dancing across the solar panels. I thought for a minute and then started the generator—our new-to-us generator! We ran it until bedtime to keep what little juice the batteries could hold available for once the anchor light had to go on and stay on all night. At bedtime, we shut off EVERYTHING except the anchor light. I mean everything. The fridge and freezer included. I even risked death by not using my CPAP machine for the first time in probably 6 years. As it turned out, I wouldn't have died. I could barely sleep all night. Every time I so much as snorted, I woke myself up. Kids, if you have a snoring problem, get a sleep study. The doctors refused to believe a guy of my weight and build could have sleep apnea, but I showed them. I stopped breathing 50 times in one hour during the sleep study. They made me sleep on my back, I'm usually a side sleeper, so it was far worse on my back. Anyhow, I didn't die, and with morning light Friday, we weighed anchor and began making way to Solomons, Maryland, where we would put a cunning plan into action. When we were headed up the bay in July, we spent about six weeks in Solomons, and we left our Toyota Highlander parked in dear friends, Cristin's and Aaron's yard, while they are spending three years in Germany (It's unlikely our car will remain there the entire three years). We call the Highlander our "northern car." Next summer, it will follow us wherever we end up going. So, as we were in need of transportation to buy new batteries, and we just happened to be going by Solomons, we contacted friends at the Southern Maryland Sailing Association and asked if we could dock there while we dealt with our battery situation. That is exactly what we did. Friday afternoon we docked at SMSA, walked the 1/2 mile or so to our car, parked it near the boat, removed six 66-pound batteries from the boat, loaded six batteries in a dock cart, loaded six batteries in the car, drove 50 miles to Sam's Club, bought six batteries ($108 apiece), recycled six batteries, and returned to the boat exhausted. Our intention at that point was to park the car and deal with the batteries in the morning. We stepped aboard Stinkpot and I realized that we needed to at least get the batteries aboard and "in position." The batteries belong along the port side of the engine room. With their 400 pounds missing, Stinkpot had a very prominent starboard list. I could just imagine another sleepless night trying not to fall out of the bed. The plan was amended. I backed the car down to the pier, loaded the batteries into the dock cart, wheeled them out to the boat, moved them aboard, and placed them where they more or less belong. With Stinkpot sitting level again, we went up to the yacht club and enjoyed a couple beverages with friends and asked to spend a second night because of forecasted winds. Saturday morning, I finished installing the new batteries. It was a blustery October day and reminded me of autumn in Maine. The new normal is people telling us that whatever weather we are enjoying, wherever we are, is unseasonably [insert correct adjective]. Over the summer, it was unseasonably hot. Now in October it is unseasonably chilly. The extremes seem to be getting more extreme with each passing year. Last year at this time, we were also on Chesapeake Bay. It was gorgeous. This year it is chilly.
Saturday came and went. We made a quick trip to the nearby market for a few food items and parked the car back at its "winter home." Sunday—today—we continued south and had a very nice cruise to Deltaville, Virginia, where we returned to the Fishing Bay Yacht Club, which I wrote on this very blog about mere months ago. No sooner were we docked, a sailboat docked behind us. It was an older couple with a comparably spry Jack Russell Terrier. We caught their lines, exchanged pleasantries, and then returned to have our dinner aboard, a walk ashore, and chill out until bedtime. As we were sitting here at twilight, we heard…well, I'll let Stacey tell this story. She just posted about it on Facebook. I'll paste it in right after I say that tomorrow we hope to get an early start to head to Portsmouth, Virginia. Here's Stacey's retelling of what just happened with our new neighbors: "Hello?" A tiny, meek, almost unheard voice roused us from not doing much of anything in Stinkpot's salon after dark following a long constitutional walk on land. Dave turned and peered into the inky night where we floated. It was the older woman from the sailboat behind us in this photo at the next slip from the other side of the dock. We had caught the couple's lines when they arrived just after we did this afternoon. "Oh, hello." Dave responded while he invitingly threw wide Stinkpot's heavy mahogany door. "Terry fell in." Dave was off like a flash. Me in my stocking feet flew after him. 100 yards away her husband Terry was just a small shape shivering in the darkness. He clung to the dock. We had noticed earlier that he wasn't the most steady on his feet for a sailor dancing along the rail, but hey, at least they are out here. "Give me your hand," Dave gently but authoritatively commanded. My Captain started to pull with all of his might while the wife stood back and lit the struggle with her cellphone flashlight. With his free hand Terry tried to push himself up but was already exhausted. The headlamp that had been on Terry's head illuminated the scene dully from below; on the murky bottom of Jackson Creek. I reached out over the water to my limit. With one mighty heave I grabbed the back of his belt holding waterlogged blue jeans. Whatever strength I mustered was enough for the three of us to hoist him back onto the dock while their little boat-terrier yipped encouragement. We tried to make as small of a fuss as we possibly could as the man sat nursing his dignity more than anything else. We were game, but Terry decided against us trying to rescue his headlamp. Greetings from GORGEOUS Havre de Grace, Maryland! We have been here for over two weeks now, having arrived on August 27th. Last time I posted here, we were in Rockhall, MD awaiting a diver to give our bottom a scrub—the boat's bottom, that is. He found growth enough down there to slow us down a bit, including a healthy crust of barnacles on our prop shafts. In no time flat, he had chiseled off our stowaways, and we were on our way, headed north along the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. It was still quite hot, and our generator had not worked so well in the heat during our stay in Rockhall. It was overheating under load, so we decided to not run it until we solved that problem (more on that in a moment). We were on the hunt for an anchorage with a good breeze, similar to the anchorage called Dun Cove that we enjoyed days before, just to the west of St. Michaels, MD. First we nosed into Fairlee Creek, which looked promising, but some crab fisherman had woven an intricate network of trotlines and floats throughout the entire anchorage with little room left for us, so we scrubbed and ran up to just north of Handy's Point in the mouth of Worton Creek. The breeze there was lovely, the water was flat calm, and we were anchored in no time enjoying dinner and the sunset. The breeze calmed down to almost nothing and the only force dictating our position to the anchor was the changing tide. Some point in the middle of the night, I arose to nature's call to find us taking a very gentle chop on the beam. There was absolutely no wind and no indication of what might be causing it. It was just one of those weird phenomena that happen on large bodies of water at night, probably caused by a distant wind across the bay that just hadn't decided to cross the water with the waves it was causing. We've experienced similar things before. It was a gentle side-to-side rocking, so I paid it no mind and returned to the berth for a couple more hours of sleep. About 5 AM, I rose once again to Stinkpot pointing into a wind and the chop it was making, coming from the same direction as the earlier gentle wave action. It was, by this point, nothing we were going to sleep through, and it was decidedly not comfortable, so I made the pre-dawn decision to venture up into Worton Creek (against protestations from the crew) where I knew we could avoid the building sea entirely. We weighed anchor in the dark and proceeded in, re-anchoring just northwest of Worton Creek Marina, and went back to bed to deal with the unfinished business of getting a decent night's sleep. When we finally shrugged off our sleep, I made calls to try to get Worton Creek Marina's service guys to take a look at Stinkpot's engines and deal with some deferred maintenance, namely our long-time problem with attaining top RPM from our engines. We've been through nearly every system that could impact that except replacing fuel lines or rebuilding our fuel injectors, and I was finally fed up with it. Cleaning our bottom returned a few MPH, but Stinkpot is supposed to be capable of so much more, and I feel we're wasting fuel with whatever is wrong, so we started making preparations to deal with it. After some soul searching, and another night spent in the same anchorage, I decided there were still a few stones I had left unturned, and we decided to proceed to a different marina where we could spend a month while I did exactly that. When last I wrote here, I mentioned we might venture up to the MTOA rendezvous, but I decided against that, and when we weighed anchor we were headed to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Knowing that my high school French probably did not prepare me properly to pronounce that which inevitably had long ago been anglicized, we searched YouTube for clues…. For the previous few days, we had been trying out a new navigation app called, Argo. It really seems like a promising app, but it had some rather significant gaps in its feature set. I had emailed the company and started a dialog with Jeff, the company founder. He told me they were located in Havre de Grace, so our trip here developed a few different angles of interest. First, we would rebuild Stinkpot's fuel injectors. Second, we'd meet up with Jeff and learn more about his app and its development and offer to help him make it more attractive to long-distance boaters such as us. So we docked on the end of pier 2 at the City Yacht Basin and secured a month of dockage from the dockmaster, Steve. I ordered my injector nozzles and a new raw water pump for the generator to cure the overheating problem, and we invited Jeff over to visit us on Stinkpot. Jeff came a couple of times, the first time, bringing some nice gifts like an Argo hat, beer coozie, dry bag, and other things. He asked if he could plug his Argo data collection dongle into our navigation network to collect depth data for improving his app (which we agreed to). On a separate trip, he brought John with him, who is another of the folks working on the Argo, and John asked if we needed a car, offering his seldom-used Subaru sedan for as long as we're here. On yet a third trip, John and Bill came to diagnose and fix an issue with the Argo data-collection dongle (all is well now). Also since we've been here, I was contacted by friends, Fred and Shirley, with whom I sit on a non-profit folk music association board called the World Folk Music Association. Fred took us shopping (pre-John's Subaru) on one of our first days here, so we could restock our thinning pantry, and he took us to lunch for good measure. Since then we've been treated to lunch several other times by Fred and Shirley. We dined with them last Saturday afternoon along with, Sean and Janet, two other mutual friends. Stacey successfully enjoyed her first-ever Maryland Blue Crab, which your humble scribe eschewed due to having tried and failed to enjoy one before. Our injector nozzles finally arrived a week or so ago, and I set to work collecting tools we don't have and extracting the first injector to replace the nozzle. You know, if you watch YouTube enough, you can foolishly gain the confidence to attempt virtually anything. With a bellyful of virtual-confidence, I easily removed the first injector and then, using my available tools as recommended by the video's creator, fruitlessly tried to recreate what I saw on YouTube. A vice, big wrenches, a torch, and brute force and I could not get the retaining cap off of this injector. I felt like a stereotypical geezer trying to open a drugstore pill bottle. I called my friend and former Dave Rowe Trio fiddler, Ed, who usually encourages me in these sorts of things, and Ed said, "Oh, I just take mine to an injector shop. You want them to be tested and balanced, and you don't have the tools." I rarely need to be told twice that I'm a fool, so last Tuesday we were back on the internet and phone—both Stacey and me—and we found a shop specializing in diesel injector rebuilding about 20 miles away, just over the Delaware line who could squeeze our 12 injectors in before our stay here in HdG expired. Last Thursday we piled into John's Subaru and drove there to drop off said injectors and our twelve, fresh nozzles. The process of disassembly, cleaning, relapping, replacing worn parts, seating our new injector nozzles, and testing for leaks and proper aerosolization and spray pattern would, we were told, cost us $80 per injector plus shop parts, as required. He said, "Figure on a grand." I didn't cry at the figure, and I think it's very fair given the circumstances. In the process of finding the shop, we called another injector shop and he turned us away because he doesn't do diesel injectors for want of an $80,000 tool he would need. I guess I can swallow my pride and pay the man who does own the tools (I surely do not and likely will never). We have been told our injectors should be ready soon, and it'll take me a couple of hours to get them all reinstalled. Until then, Stinkpot shall remain motionless, and we have ceased using our on-board heads for fear of needing to get our blackwater tank pumped out before we are once again mobile. The marina has nice bathroom facilities, but it's a quarter-mile round trip on foot, so we're getting our steps in. So, all told, this has been a good stop for us. The marina adjoins a nice park with an excellent boardwalk. We've enjoyed the First Friday street festival. There was a "Lighted Boat Parade" and a fireworks show to close out the summer season on Labor Day weekend. We intend to take in the nearby museums as we are able and desire diversion, though our evening walks punctuated with roadside/trailside signs have given us a nice taste of the town and its well-documented history. I'm not sure when our next update will happen, but it shall certainly be after we depart here for destinations unknowable, which we are scheduled to do on September 26.
It feels like I haven't dropped an update here in a long time! It's funny what a few weeks of being tied to docks will do to you. We have found ourselves staying up later and waking later in the morning. A lot more lazy time…time at the pool at the marina. Since our last post here, so much has happened. During that heatwave under which the entire continental US seemed to suffer for weeks, our main air conditioning unit died a tragic death. Given some time, patience, and a few hundred dollars in parts, it was probably repairable, but it was also 35 years old, and the technology has progressed with the years, so we decided to "bite the bullet" and ordered a new unit. It took about 3 yea—I mean days—to arrive at the local West Marine in Solomons, Maryland, and I had it installed and running within a few hours of toting it aboard. It was an amazing relief to get cool. We only survived the three days without it by taking advantage of the marina's saltwater swimming pool, but even it was starting to approach "hot tub temperatures" as the heat wave wore on. Suffice it to say, the new A/C unit works great! On August 10, our slip agreement with Safe Harbor Zahnisers expired, so we moved Stinkpot to the t-head dock at Southern Maryland Sailing Association where I played music in July and again a few days before we cast off to leave Solomons—one of the perks! After we got Stinkpot tied up and secured, we piled into our car and drove away. I had music to play: two pub shows in Massachusetts, an evening at the Towne Crier in Beacon, NY, an afternoon performance at the Middleburgh, NY Library at the behest of Sonny Ochs. The comings and goings of that music tour were well-documented in Chapter 38 of Folk on the Water, so I'll restrain from rehashing it here. We returned to Stinkpot Monday, August 15, did groceries, and got ready for our final week in Solomons, which seemed to rush by. Laundry was done. Boat maintenance checks were done. On Friday night I played for the club members in the SMSA clubhouse. Saturday we drove to Rockville, Maryland, where I played a house concert at my friends, Scott and Paula Moore's house. Sunday we returned to the boat and restocked the larder at the local grocery emporia for our Monday morning departure. Monday, we rose and made ready for a 10-11 AM departure to take advantage of a favoring tide to ride the Chesapeake northard. At the appointed hour, we dropped lines, moved briefly over to the town pump-out dock to lighten our blackwater tank, and headed out of Solomons for the bay. We tucked ourselves into what we thought should be the current and realized we were not making speed. I turned the boat around to see what would happen and our speed reduced even more, so we were indeed riding the tide. Turned back north, we decided our bottom must be fouled from a month-and-a-half of sitting mostly still on the dock. We decided to take our time and not "burn fuel for nothing," tucking into an anchorage behind St. Michaels, MD for the evening. Tuesday, we rose again and again delayed our departure to ride the tide, which we did all the way to the Bulkhead (free dock) in Rock Hall, Maryland, from where I'm writing right now, a morning later. We will remain here until we can get a diver to take a look around and knock off whatever detritus may be slowing our progress. From here, we have no idea where we'll go, but we may head up to the MTOA (Marine Trawler Owners Association) get-together on the Sassafras River this weekend. We'll see. We out here to explore and enjoy, so we'll wet a finger and stick it in the air when we good and ready.
It's very hot here in Solomons, Maryland right now. 100°F in the boat's cockpit when I snapped this photo. The lower two temperatures are INSIDE the boat with the air conditioning cranked (it's slowly losing the battle, but by the time is might get too hot inside, the sun goes down and it recovers). I bet you're wondering about what is 2°F. That's inside our deep freeze, which is out on deck with the sun beating on it. I keep wondering if there is a way to fit myself inside there for a little while, but I have my doubts. My contortionist days are mostly behind me.
Two familiar and perfectly wonderful anchorages in a row, and neither was part of the plan. We find ourselves in the second of them, swinging at anchor in Solomons, Maryland. Our eight-day odyssey of anchorages, docks, friends new and not-so-new, frightening stormy skies, and not-quite-angry-but-at-least-slightly-miffed seas over the last four days has brought us here, but I get ahead of myself. Allow me to back up four days. As you might recall from our last blog, we were docked in Deltaville, Virginia at a very nice yacht club that had given us three days on their very comfy T-head dock in exchange for a performance after a cookout on July 3rd. Stacey and I ate well and were very glad of their hospitality, and not wanting to overstay our welcome, we attempted to leave the very placid harbor on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 5th. We knew the wind had come up, and we could see waves breaking over the shallow bits of the creek entrance, but we were sure we'd be able to get out and around Stingray Point before the winds and waves got the better of us. All the wind and wave apps were saying that it was 1 to 2 footers coming from the south, and surely we've been through worse. Furthermore, once we make the final turn north, the seas would be behind us—you know, following seas. That's supposed to be a good thing. On top of that, we were unwisely "timing the tides," which means we were waiting for the flood to carry us north and save us fuel. If you run north up the bay on the ebb, you burn more fuel and it takes longer to get anywhere. If we left at 3pm, we'd have the flood carrying us north and saving fuel. How foolish we were! You can't time the Chesapeake. You take the flat calm when you can get it, which is in the morning. We had dinner cranking in the Crock-Pot, and we expertly wedged it in so rough seas would not cause it to seek a low point in the cabin while underway, disconnected the shore power and water, cast off lines, and headed into the wild blue. We cleared the channel and it got a little rougher, and a little rougher. We were seeing waves of about 1 to 2 feet, as the forecast stated—until we saw something more like 5 feet, and it broke over the bow and brought Stinkpot to a standstill whilst she bounced on the next three consecutive waves. A rogue. These things happen. Press on. Two minutes later it happened again. Stacey was below making sure nothing was becoming airborne in the salon—like our dinner. I assured her via our ship-board communications system that if it happened again, we'd turn tail and…no sooner had the words left my mouth…it happened again. I turned the boat around, the sea became a following sea as it beckoned us back to the same dock we'd just left not 15 minutes before. We tied up, connected the shore power and water, and, when it was ready, ate our dinner that never spilled a drop. It wasn't long after dinner a storm cloud moved by to the north and "convinced us" to go ashore, just in case it did something dastardly on its way by (it didn't). That's when we remembered something about Chesapeake Bay. The early boat gets the calm. The winds always kick up the afternoon seas. Message received and hopefully remembered for next time. The next morning, we woke early. Wait, that should be all-caps: EARLY! We started the engines, brought in the shore connections, cast off the lines, and we were gone. Our destination, as earlier stated, was to be Tangier Island. We had been doing some research and it had come to our attention that there was a marina with comparatively inexpensive fuel not far from there, and we intended to spend a night at the island and then run up for the cheap fuel. We got out, made the turns to the north past the point, and the wind was coming off the western shore—on the beam—at about 14 MPH. After the previous day's events in a similar wind, and realizing that a good breeze needs fetch (read: distance) to turn little waves into big waves, we decided to just run straight up the western shore and stay on our friends' dock in Reedville. Walt and Mary have a gorgeous spot there and had extended an invitation, so we quickly emailed them and told them we were coming. Tangier could wait a day. We arrived in Reedville in late morning, and with the mercury creeping toward 90°, we immediately set to work plugging into shore power and getting the air conditioning working! We enjoyed the day looking out the window at the beautiful scenery around us and chilling INSIDE the boat. While enjoying the cool, we came to the realization that a couple marinas near us would be dropping their fuel price 30 cents overnight. That meant crossing the bay to get our fuel no longer needed to happen. Our reason to venture over to Tangier Island was now solely "because we want to." That kind of reasoning made it easy to push off the visit until later this summer when we'll be looking for places to visit and running south on the bay. We decided that our next day on the bay would see us in Solomons. The forecast was for sun, light breezes, and nice temperatures on the water. So, decisions made, we had a lovely visit with Walt and Mary on their porch, took a nice walk around town, and retired for the night. The next morning, we shoved off and ran about 4 miles south to Ingram Bay Marina where we fueled (180 gallons at $5.39/gallon) and pumped out our black water tank. We then began running north toward Solomons, which required crossing the massive, 10-mile mouth of the Potomac River. It was beautiful and sunny, just as predicted, but for some reason I referred to my weather app to see a small craft advisory was in effect for the very water we were cruising on. It made NO SENSE. It was beautiful out there, and there had been nothing in the forecast last time I looked, but there is was, all scary-looking, in big red letters with exclamation points and everything. It was obviously Chesapeake Bay being fickle and changeable, and there was nothing we could do about it. We were committed. Another ten minutes went by and the sky started to get dark around us. We still had about 5 miles of river mouth to cross, and we were running against the ebb current, which was running about a full knot against us, so we were only making about 6 knots SOG (speed over ground). The north wind came up and waves started to break under our bow, depositing salt spray all over the foredeck. I started considering our "bail out" options. Where could we go? We could take the building sea on the beam run behind Point Lookout and anchor in Lake Conoy by the state park which would add about 8 miles of off-course distance to our trip to Solomons, or we could continue running another 4 miles north and duck into St. Jerome Creek where we've anchored before. It's skinny water, but if we just stay inside the marked channel, it's just enough for Stinkpot. We opted for the latter and got off the bay. We'd continue our way to Solomons Friday morning. After we cleared Point Lookout and got north of the Potomac River mouth, the sea started to lay down a bit, and we ran the rest of the way into St. Jerome Creek without incident. It took two tries to get the hook set in 4 feet of water, but after putting the hook down further up into the cove off the channel, we felt confident we'd have a peaceful evening, which we did—winds be damned. Friday morning, we rose with the dawn, weighed anchor and continued our northard push to Solomons, riding the flood the whole way. We arrived in the harbor by 10:30am and had the anchor down in our favorite spot before our morning coffee buzz had even worn off. We did go ashore in the dinghy, reclaimed the keys to our car, and ran a couple of errands (including a much needed haircut for yours truly), and picked up our Amazon packages (including our new Breeze Booster), returning later to the boat for supper and a very pleasant, if hot and sticky night on the hook. The Saturday forecast was for all-day rain/showers, which we ultimately chose to weather aboard (and during which I finished writing this post). Tomorrow we shall move to our allotted slip at Safe Harbor Zahnisers, where we shall be for the next month. UPDATE: As scheduled, we moved into our new boat slip around noon Sunday. They originally had us on "G" dock, but I balked after pulling within sight of it, and said I didn't think Stinkpot would fit between the pilings. They called up to the office and confirmed that I was right and moved us to the much nicer "F" dock. We are in the catbird seat now and have already had an evening visit with our friends, Cristin and Aaron on Sunday night, and Monday we ran up to Harpers Ferry, West Virigina in our car to visit with good friends, Cherie and Chris of Technomadia, and walk around the national park—which is gorgeous and worth the trip!
Thursday…four days ago. It feels like a couple weeks ago, but it has only been four days. We spent the days in the run-up to Thursday preparing the boat to leave our slip (well, actually, our friend, Robert's slip) in Hopewell, Virginia, where we spent the last two months working on the boat, installing Robert's gifted generator into Stinkpot, and waiting for the right time to get underway. We determined a week earlier that the right time would be July 1st after consulting tide calculators. Doing so would allow us to ride the outflowing tide almost all the way down the James River to Hampton in one day—it would peter out around Jamestown around 1PM, but then the tide would change there and give us another push all the way to Hampton before petering out again when we arrived at the mouth of the river. We did a last grocery store run and then moved our car to our next destination with the help of Robert's Jeep. We got the boat ready and scrubbed a month's worth of spider poop off and ejected the eight-legged web-artists responsible for it. We put all the tools away, and stowed all the spare parts. Still planning on a Friday departure, Wednesday we decided to move up our departure to Thursday. We were ready, and the plan was to anchor out at a nearby swimming hole where I'd dive on the hull and see what kind of condition our sacrificial anodes were in before we ran down into the saltwater of Chesapeake Bay. By Wednesday evening, I looked at the tides again and realized we'd have our "good run" all the way to Hampton a day earlier than the models had said a week before. We changed our plans. Thursday morning rolled around and Robert showed up early at the marina to see us off. Hugs and handshakes all around and we cast off with Robert telling us to look for him waving when we come onto the James River. We pulled out of the slip and made our way to the marina's black water pump-out dock to take care of a little business first. We started the process and the nozzle dripped this viscous mess all over our clean deck and on Stacey's pant leg. This is not an uncommon occurrence when using this kind of equipment, but usually the drips are human waste which rinses right off with a water hose. Spoiler Alert: this stuff didn't. We started pumping (the machine still worked fine), and started to clean the mess while it we offloaded our "cargo." This was when we realized that the "mess" was oily. Someone had used the pump-out machine to clean the sludge out of a fuel tank—at least that is the only hypothesis I can come up with to explain the mess it made. Whatever it was, it was pumped into Hopewell's sewage system, which can't possibly be a good thing. Pumped out and cleaned up, we started our way out to the James River to pick up our predicted current. We came around City Point and took our last looks at Hopewell, and there was Robert as promised, standing on top of an oil tank and waving at us. Stacey took his picture while Robert took ours. You can barely make him out on the oil tank, but Stinkpot looked great underway in his shot. It felt great to be underway again! As predicted, we had the current pushing us for about 4 hours. About the time it petered out, we were just south of Jamestown and we dropped anchor in Cobham Bay to wait for the tide to turn about 2 hours later. While we were there, I pulled on my swim trunks, strapped on a diving mask and proceeded to give Stinkpot a quick once-over to make sure she was in good shape below the waterline. The last time I looked, was right before we launched in Maine for the summer of 2021. The water was not very clear. To wit, I could not see my hand in front of my face, so "copped a feel," and the year-old Navalloy anodes right in front of me were crumbling under my touch. They were, spent. Anodes protect the metal parts of the boat underwater from galvanic corrosion, and without them electrical currents in the water will "eat" propellers, rudders, and such, via a process called galvanic corrosion. Without turning a blog post into a chemistry class, anodes are made of a metal that will corrode before the bronze and stainless steel that our underwater bits are made from, so keeping them fresh is very important—especially in saltwater, which is an electrolytic solution. Not such a big deal way up the James River where the water has no salinity—I'm sure our nearly-spent anodes were just enough up there, but the closer we got to the ocean, the more important it became to change them out. I immediately began contacting divers in the Hampton Roads/Portsmouth/Norfolk, VA area. Only one got back to me, and only to say that he didn't work in that area (though Google disagreed with him, apparently). Again, Robert to the rescue, when I told him about our anodes, he gave me the number for Justin, the diver he uses. I called and Justin Friday morning he said he'd try to get a colleague out to us ASAP, and if all else failed, he'd come himself on Monday. Having anchored Thursday evening in Hampton at a favorite anchorage, while we were ashore enjoying dinner at a local tavern, Justin texted me and said he had someone coming to help us first thing in the morning. We finished our dinner and returned to the boat for the evening and started scheming how we'd find a dock for him to do the work. We decided to just take our chances and use the Hampton City Docks. 8AM the next morning, my phone buzz with a text, and it was our diver, Christian, telling me he was on his way and would be meeting us in 30 minutes. I told him to meet us at the City Docks and we quickly raised anchor and started chugging in that direction, about 1/4 mile away. While I drove, Stacey called the dockmaster, and after a little phone tag, he gave us permission to dock. It all came together. Diver arrived and changed our anodes. We sent payment via Venmo—very reasonable too. By 10:30AM we were underway, to where we did not know. After a bunch of indecision, and given that we had a good following flood tide, breeze, and 2-foot chop pushing us up the bay, we decided to run until we wore out the push, which we estimated to be about Deltaville, VA, and which proved to be correct. About the time we started to get near the mouth of the Piankatank River, we noticed our speed starting to slow. We pulled into Jackson Creek and dropped anchor. We launched the dinghy and did a little exploring of the creek as the day waned and spent a very peaceful night in this familiar anchorage—we anchored here before in spring of 2020, while we were cruising home to Maine after finishing the Great Loop. At the time, we did not go ashore because it was early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sunday morning, I woke, made coffee, and emailed the nearby yacht club, Fishing Bay Yacht Club to ask about spending the night of the 4th on a dock instead of leaving ourselves out in the open on the hook where revelers surely would be careening around us on jetskis and pulling screaming children on floating, inflatable toys behind power boats. I happened to mention in the email that I'd gladly play a show in exchange for such a courtesy. At about 1:30PM, our boat phone rang (What? You don't have a "boat phone?"). It was Brian, the General Manager of the yacht club, inviting us to dock for as long as we'd like to stay, enjoy the club's evening cookout, and entertain the waiting masses. I accepted his offer to both dock and perform, and said we'd be over right after we dinghied over to the local maritime museum and park for a walk around the grounds, which is exactly what we did. As I am writing, it is Monday, July 4, and we are still enjoying this beautiful spot on the club's t-head pier. Tomorrow we plan to drop lines and head to Tangier Island, which we have been told is a must-visit place. We'll let you know….
say it is an engineering marvel that it happened at all. The generator weighs 505 lbs. and needed to be lifted into the boat, laid on its side, moved over two feet, and then stood up into position by rolling it 90°. Robert owns a welding shop and made a makeshift, Stinkpot-sized gantry crane out of scrap steel that performed flawlessly. Everyone should have a friend like Robert!
2. I'm the father of a college graduate. My son completed a bachelor's degree with a major in film making from Lesley University, which I traveled north to witness. No sooner had the wheels of the plane hit touched down, my phone rang with the news that he had just tested positive for COVID-19 and would not be taking part in his own graduation ceremonies. I visited with friends in Maine and Massachusetts, as planned, and drove my own car from Maine back to Virginia to give Stacey and me wheels for the summer. 3. Stinkpot continues to show her age, and we continue to stay on top of systems failures as they happen. What have I fixed recently (other than installing our new-to-us generator)? Well, air conditioners. Both of them. We have managed to keep cool and comfortable during the warm weather, but it required that I add HVAC technician to my list of skills. In this case, it was a failed start/run capacitor on our salon A/C unit and a corroded connector on our stateroom A/C unit. 4. We have become adept at ordering from Amazon without an address, using "Amazon Lockers" and "Amazon Hub Counters." We've been using a counter at a RiteAid Pharmacy nearby. Strangely, there are some items on Amazon that we simply cannot order here, which we've found enormously odd. We had no idea that geography was an issue when ordering from Amazon, but apparently it is. 5. Stinkpot is DIRTY. We are in a covered slip, which keeps the sun from baking us, but I have never in all my days seen so many spiders and other insects in one place. Fortunately, there do not seem to be a lot of biting insects, but I have been pressure washing weekly, and within a day of doing so, she's covered in webs again. It's a nearly pointless, perpetual pursuit. The worst part is the spider poop. It's harder to remove than gull crap, leaving the captain to frequently utter, "This is bull****!" Other than that, we are status normal and just waiting for a few upgrades to be complete—the generator is functioning, but we still haven't connected the remote start and gauges. Once everything is done, we'll be scheduling our departure and figuring out how to relocate our car to wherever we'll end up next. If you happen to be somewhere in southeastern Virginia and want to help us move our car, drop us a line…. Our next post will come after we've arrived at our next stop. Stay tuned!
Both of our alternators had failed, so we were very dependent on our little Honda EU2000 generator to keep batteries charged, as daylight (we also charge batteries with solar panels) was getting scarce for the approaching winter. I knew I'd need to upgrade and rewire while I was replacing the alternators, which would take a lot of back and forth to auto parts stores and chandleries (marine stores), so I put it off until we had ready access to wheels, and as it turned out, that was here.
from Westerbeke generators (original equipment on Stinkpot) to Onan generators, and that difference means modifications. So here we are, buying and borrowing tools, ordering parts, and making the most of Robert's genuine and generous hospitality.
after which I will be flying back to New England in a couple of weeks to watch my son, Kieran, graduate from Lesley University.
To wit, the plan is that I will leave Stacey here at the boat, fly one-way, into Portland, Maine, where my good buddy, Steve, will pick me up at the airport. I'll spend a day or two with he and his wife, Leah, while I get my car, which has been parked in their garage all winter, ready for a trip south. I will then drive to Medford, Massachusetts to impose upon some other dear friends, Jeanne and Charlie, for a few days whilst the graduation and other related (and unrelated) festivities happen. Finally, I will put myself behind the wheel for the long trip from Beantown to Stinkpot back here in Hopewell, at which point we'll decide what's next for Stinkpot. As of this writing, we plan to be cruising Chesapeake Bay for the summer. I might play some gigs here and there, and there will also be some online concerts from the boat as we go. Where around the Chesapeake Bay region would you like to see Stinkpot drop anchor? Let us know in the comments. |
AuthorsStacey and Dave are nomadic explorers who travel the waters of the eastern United States aboard their Bayliner 3870, m/y Stinkpot. Archives
April 2024
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